Mo. Cooper’s Good Friday Sermon

You know –
sometimes people ask why in Holy Week is the tone of our reflection so unrelentingly
gloomy? Why does hope seem so scarce? Why don’t we relieve or punctuate the
focus on loss with a bit more of the hope that we know waits for us at Easter? In my experience, people who ask this are not
stupid people – nor are they insensitive – neither are they helpless innocents
who have never suffered themselves. In
fact they may be people who do not need to re-appropriate each year the depth
and the cost of the gift which Jesus, God-made-man, gave us in his passion and
death. But in fact (despite some) the
church, the keeper of our story, does not lead us swiftly to Easter joy, rather
she has us walk slowly together through all the sad steps of Holy Week –
lingering today at the foot of the cross.

So why do we do
this? Why do we linger here in this painful chapter? I believe that there are
two things we are to learn in this place. First: we are given a picture of how
much God knows and loves us. In the letter to the Hebrews, which we heard read
today, the writer says “we do not have a high priest who is unable to
sympathize with our weaknesses.” (4:15)
Second: This period teaches us to be compassionate to one whom we see as
stronger, wiser, and therefore less in need of our concern or even prayer.

So Holy Week is
designed to teach us how much we are loved and how important it is to return that
love. Holy Week teaches us to receive and return love in a life-giving circle. And
the piece of Holy Week where we linger in sorrow is the piece where we receive
the love from God which enables us to return our deepened love back to its
source.

Now I don’t know
about you…but I often forget to pray for those whom I perceive to be
stronger. I forget teachers, and spiritual directors and all the other guides
in my life regularly. Why? Because I see them as stronger, wiser and more
authoritative than I. Each of them seems less in need or prayer than those of
us who gather here.

Often, it is
only when one of my role models ships into illness or asks for prayer that I
think to do so. Now I don’t blame myself for this. I think it is a natural
tendency but I am not proud of it either and I think that it is just such an complacent
tendency that Holy Week is designed to cure. Because mindful gratitude can move
mountains and make this world a better place.

I think I never
told you how I became a priest. It was 1992 and the AIDS epidemic in this country
had not been brought under control just yet, in fact that that that year
(according to AMFAR) it was the leading cause of death in people ages 25-44.

Now, I was
working that year as a lay chaplain at St. Luke’s/ Roosevelt/ uptown, and as a chaplain,
I found that the people I served there would come, stay a few days and be gone.
I would see them once…maybe twice. One of the exceptions to this rule was patients
who had AIDS – they stayed a long time.

Now while I was
there, I remember one young man who called himself Angel – not “an-hell”
but Angel – and he had AIDS; he was dying; though we never spoke of that. We
talked about clothes (Angel was a cross-dresser) and often we talked about his
mother who was present in his life but to whom he was afraid to tell his
diagnosis.

Now, after quite
a few visits, Angel asked about my life. I told him about Peter and Andrew and that
I had hopes to become a priest. As Winter passed into Spring, we continued
these visits touching on the same subjects – and finally it came time for my
critical interview with the committee which I mentioned in the midst of the
usual conversation. Now a week later
when I went to see Angel, he asked how that interview had gone. Oh! Great! I told
him, they let me in! “I knew it,” he said. “I prayed for you.” I was blown
away…with all his trouble – he remembered me – he had compassion for me. And
if things had gone wrong…we would have mourned together. But they didn’t.

And I am here to
tell you I am SURE that it is because of his prayer that I am with you today. I
can’t tell you what happened to Angel because I left shortly thereafter and
once I said goodbye, I never saw him again. But Angel taught me something – don’t
forget to pray for the people who seem to be the strong ones in your life –
because ALL human beings suffer weakness.

And that is the
lesson of Holy Week – that even Jesus, God made man, suffered sorrow,
abandonment, pain, and death. And all you and I can do for him is pray.

So when I step
down from here, we’ll take some silence… to thank God for taking human form, and
to ask God to let Jesus know as he hangs on the cross that we love him, we are
with him, we are praying for him. Don’t you worry that it’s 2000 years later,
God knows that. Just remember, mindful gratitude can move mountains even to
comfort our Lord.